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MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

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Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#21

Post by grinich »

Agathos wrote: post #10

“Inbox is an email company. Google is an advertising company. This product is our focus, and will not be ‘discontinued’ unexpectedly.” Burn! Very amusing. But for all we know they will be acqui-hired, maybe even by Google, and then shifted to a different project.

I said this in the other thread and I know it sounds cliché, but we're not planning to "go away" or get acquired or something. We've always positioned this company as a long-term play, and made that very clear when hiring, raising money, etc. It's just not possible to go after something big if you plan to "flip" the company quickly.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#22

Post by GrinningFool » 

    Grinich also points out that developers can build using 
    the Inbox APIs for free, without sending email data to 
    a third-party.
Cool!

    In the future, however, the company will release a 
    hosted version of Inbox that will allow developers to 
    create applications without needing to also scale their 
    own infrastructure.
Oh...

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#23

Post by hnriot »

arasmussen wrote: post #13
volaski wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no free lunch. FB (Or rather, Apple and Google's Push Notification Server they depend on) and SMS are centralized messaging systems and that's why they can be fast, whereas email is decentralized and designed to be "good enough", which makes it slow but as a result has other benefits that centralized messaging systems can't have

I would personally much rather PAY for a centralized system that works better than "good enough".

Until the centralized system fails. Email is resilient and will still be working post-apocalypse, where as, FB will probably not.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#24

Post by gwillen »

Your claim that your product will not be discontinued is worthless.

If you're so sure of that, put your money where your mouth is, and offer an SLA with a contractual minimum duration you promise to keep the service up, and significant monetary penalties if you fail to meet it.

Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#25

Post by grinich »

microtonal wrote: post #12

I hope that there will be some standardisation in these efforts. First there was Fastmail's JMAP, then Google's announcement of extending GMail's APIs and now this. IMAP has a lot of shortcomings, but at least it is a standard. That said, Inbox' approach seems nice in that it wraps a new API around 'legacy' protocols as well.

Michael from Inbox here.

I actually looked pretty closely at JMAP when it was announce. It's really just a JavaScript wrapper around IMAP conventions. Plus, there's no way to actually use it-- it's just a document spec.

The thing people don't realize about IMAP being a "standard" is that there are tons of extensions, weird bugs, provider-specific edge-cases, no comprehensive tests, no reference implementation, etc. If you mean it has an RFC, then yes it's a standard. But actually working with it is still hellish.

We're trying to fix email from a pragmatic, developer-focused point of view. We just want to build new apps and services without the struggle of old protocols or dealing with character encodings. The philosophical argument can come later when the dust settles.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#26

Post by VonGuard »

grey-area wrote: post #15
boomzilla wrote: post #3

In my opinion, the reason no one add "features" to an email client because it is just as fine as is. Please tell me one thing that a user (power or just every day user) really needs that is not supported by a reasonably recent email client? And no, every few people use emails as a todo list.

Please tell me one thing that a user (power or just every day user) really needs that is not supported by a reasonably recent email client? Sure, here are some ideas I'd like to see: - Effortless encryption - Verified identity - Pull model rather than push model (like twitter, requires verified identity, would eliminate spam and work for many email addresses which you don't want to be public) - Attachments which are…

A lot of these are protocol changes, not necessarily client changes... And I don't see many protocol changes coming for email...

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#28

Post by grinich »

GrinningFool wrote: post #22

Grinich also points out that developers can build using the Inbox APIs for free, without sending email data to a third-party. Cool! In the future, however, the company will release a hosted version of Inbox that will allow developers to create applications without needing to also scale their own infrastructure. Oh...

You can totally still run it yourself. But we figure most developers won't want to run lots and lots of servers to sync+store terabytes of mail data. (see Heroku, AWS, etc.)

... but you can if you want. And if that sounds interesting, maybe you should work with us? :) jobs@inboxapp.com

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#30

Post by mikeryan »

You ever see those commercial restaurant spaces which seem like a good spot on paper, but every restaurant that goes into it seems to fail?

Thats kind of how I feel about all the "We fixed email" startups. A real pain point but one I'd never want to tackle since there doesn't seem to be one "I've fixed it" solution.

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